Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Aging meat and Rigamortis?

I have heard and seen that meat that gets cooled quickly and goes in to rigors then seems to stay that way. Usually it is warm enough for the meat to go through this and then relax. I have heard this will result in tougher meat but have no way to test this easy.

When this happens should the meet be hung longer or aged in an ice chest? I am trying the latter now and it seems to have worked some at about day four in the cooler with the drain plug open.

Most often, the concern with aging meat is with its being flaccid.

I think this should be in the other thread, regarding the little blue pill...

Tejano,

There are a couple of related phenomena, one called "cold shortening" and the other "thaw rigor."

What you especially want to avoid is the meat freezing before it goes into rigor mortis (thaw rigor), but simply cooling down too quickly can also cause "cold shortening," even if the meat doesn't freeze. Either causes the meat to stay tough even if it's aged meat considerably.

I learned about it after hanging a young mule deer buck up in the open during a day down near zero, in a pretty stiff wind, one morning many years ago. The buck was field-dressed but not skinned, and froze solid by evening. After thawing the buck out and "aging" it for a week, even the backstraps were tough!

The big trick is to prevent the meat from chilling below about 60 degrees for the first 10-12 hours, and then not freezing until it comes out of rigor.

Hm. So that's why my cousin and I were taught by our fathers to get deer hanging in a garage or shed quickly. Both dads worked processing meat commercially at one time or another so we just accepted it as the way it's to be done. Was always mystified by people commenting here on tough venison.

To add, we were also taught to let it hang at least a couple days before skinning to make it easier, and age with the hide on if you're going to do that.

That's one of the reasons for tough venison. Another is actually butchering the meat during rigor mortis, which some people do, and it ruins even what should be super-tender meat. Was once in a deer camp where a self-described game-meat expert was going to feed us some great stuff. He took filets, the little "underloins" from the bottom of the spine, that were still in vigor, sliced them up, then cooked them well-done in a too-cool frying pan, so they were nice and gray all the way through. They were tougher than jerky, but didn't taste nearly as good.

Game birds respond the same way. A lot of people cook' 'em immediately, while they're still in rigor, and make them nice and chewy. Aging for a few days helps, partly because it allows them time to come out of rigor. But it really helps older birds, whether a rooster pheasant, big gobbler or an old goose.

My meat has been aging

So far no rigamortis

How aged does this meat need to be?

I've always skinned, quartered and tossed deer in a cooler with frozen plastic jugs to age for about 4 days. Never really had any problems, summer through winter doing this and the meat has always turned out fine. Interesting.

What about squirrels? Do you age them as well?

How about hogs? I've always thought you needed to skin them and get them on ice ASAP because they spoil faster than other critters?

4winds,

I'm not saying the process of cooling meat shouldn't start immediately, just that shouldn't be cooled super-quickly. Your technique is about right, since the plastic jugs of ice won't cool the meat rapidly, and rigor mortis normally dissipates within 24 hours or so. So you're essentially aging the meat for about 3 days after it cools and relaxes from rigor.

What happens during aging is enzymes naturally in the meat break down the collagen of the muscle cells. Collagen makes meat tougher, and increases as animals grow older, the reason big bucks are harder to chew than younger bucks. And the same is true of game birds.

But some animals naturally have less collagen in their muscles, including pigs and pronghorns, so don't require much aging.

Interesting Mule Deer.. The Game and Fish have done some stuff on aging meat.. They also said antelope didn't need the aging process of deer and elk.. Always wondered why, but that explains it...

Sometimes nothing helps.I killed an old cow moose last year, and followed all the slow cooling practices. Then I hung her for two weeks in a walk in cooler at 38 degrees.She still is tough as shoe sole leather. Pressure cooking or grinding is the only way I can eat it. Ditto with a big older bull I killed in 2007.

I am in the "get the hide off immediately" camp.

I have hunted elk in later seasons that froze solid the night after I killed them that were just as tender as ones not.

I killed a bull in Alberta one day that froze solid that night, and thawed out on the way back to Colorado ,then froze again after processing. It was fairly tender.

I have noticed when processing elk with the no gut methods where the back strap/loins are removed fairly quick ,at least before rigor sets in that those back straps are tougher than past back straps when we quartered elk by splitting the spine and are usually tougher than the round steaks off the same elk.

I am certainly no expert and these are only my experiences with a lot of elk,not many deer,and others may vary.I think the animal's age has a lot more to do with it.

Thanks, JB.

I've heard that pigs didn't really need much if any aging, didn't know about pronghorns being the same way.

How long would you age them and at what temp?

Exactly! When we are quail hunting down here, we never ever fry up the quail we killed that day when preparing lunch. We always use "last week's" quail. Fresh killed quail will be tough!

4winds,

We usually age birds a week in the refrigerator.

Game animals should be required to wear large signs denoting whether they have been eating grass or corn.

Sometimes it's simply not possible to keep carcasses from freezing within a few hours of being killed. Hunting in -30F or colder tends to freeze anything and everything solid within a few hours after dressing or deboning...

I and my family ate deer for a few years that we didn't really prefer. Didn't know why. By accident I learned to age the deer BEFORE butchering and especially freezing.

It's too long of a story to detail. Out of necessity I took a buck to a processor and he said it'd be ready in a week. Ok, thot he was backed up. NO.

After that I and my friends began aging deer before freezing and everyone PREFERED a lot.

I shared this with a friend in 1986 and 'converted' a WHOLE deer camp. They got Refrigerators instead of Freezers.


Jerry

saddlesore,

The age of the animal has a LOT to do with it, because of the collagen content, but so does the time of fall (before, during, after the rut), and the general condition of the animal. Was it a dry, hot summer or was there plenty rain and green feed? Etc. etc. Which is another reason it's more difficult to take care of wild meat, as opposed to domestic meat: They're all individuals, and the time of year can also be very different.

The biggest bull elk I ever killed was also very tough, even after two weeks of aging. But I gauged the aging by cutting off a chunk of backstrap every day or two and quick-frying it to see what progress (if any) was occurring. After three weeks, all of a sudden, I could feel the difference just when slicing the meat. He wasn't as tender as a young bull, but even his round steaks were reasonably chewable--far more than if we'd butchered him after only two weeks.

But some species are also more consistent. One of my dad's cousins was a rancher in Wyoming, and they killed antelope to eat all year round. It wasn't legal, but a lot of ranchers were like that back then--and he said antelope were the only wild hoofed animal that was consistently good to eat year-round. (And yes, he'd tried them all!)

John, what temperature do you try to age your meat?